Gavin Newsom backs ‘stranglehold’ restraint ban for California police after George Floyd’s death
Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday he’s moving to ban police in California from restraining people by compressing their carotid artery following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Newsom said he’ll remove the technique, known as a carotid restraint, from statewide law enforcement training and is endorsing a bill, AB 1196, to ban the practice.
He said there is no longer a place for a policing tactic “that literally is designed to stop people’s blood from flowing into their brain.” He said the state must ban “strangleholds that put people’s lives at risk.”
The Democratic governor also said he’ll spearhead an effort to pass a new law to change the standard for when officers should use force during protests and to control crowds. His office says he’ll work with lawmakers including the Legislative Black Caucus, national experts, community leaders and law enforcement to come up with a proposal.
“One thing that is crystal clear to me,” Newsom said, “(is) that protesters have the right not to be harassed. Protesters have the right to protest peacefully...without being arrested, gassed, shot at by projectiles.”
Newsom was joined by Ron Davis, an African American police officer who previously was an Oakland police captain and an adviser to former President Barack Obama on police reform.
During the civil unrest of the 1960s, Davis said, “our job was to oppress and to stop the expression of First Amendment rights.” He said the job is different now.
“There’s only two types of protests we should not accept, that that’s silence and violence,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of chiefs take a knee, and that’s great, but now take a stance.”
Floyd died in police custody after an officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for nearly 9 minutes. The hold officers used on Floyd is considered a version of a carotid restraint, which involves putting pressure on both sides of the neck and can cause a person to become unconscious by restricting blood flow.
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg said Wednesday he wants the city to review whether to ban the carotid restraint after the Sacramento Bee reported the police department is investigating a use-of-force incident from early this week in which an officer used a neck restraint on a teenager. It’s unclear from bystander cellphone video if the officer was attempting to perform a carotid restraint or another type of neck restraint.
Following Newsom’s comments, Steinberg updated his position to say he supports the ban on the carotid restraint for departments across the state, including the Sacramento Police Department.
“I support the statewide removal of the carotid hold as an allowable police tactic,” the mayor tweeted Friday afternoon.
Following the 2018 police killing of Stephon Clark, Sacramento police limited when the carotid restraint could be used, along with other changes to its use of force policy, Steinberg said.
The department’s general orders, updated in September 2019, allow the restraint to be used when: “An individual is assaultive, and the officer reasonably believes that such a hold appears necessary to prevent serious bodily injury or death to an officer or other person.”
In 2018, California police departments reported 679 incidents in which officers or civilians used force resulting in injury or death. Among those, 5.4 percent of the incidents involved officers using carotid restraint, according to the state Justice Department.
Crowd control tactics have come under intense scrutiny across the nation as people have turned out in huge numbers to protest Floyd’s death. Video from protesters and journalists has captured police using tear gas, rubber bullets and other “less lethal” equipment to disperse crowds and detain people.
Bee Capitol Bureau Chief Adam Ashton contributed to this report.
This story was originally published June 5, 2020 at 12:33 PM with the headline "Gavin Newsom backs ‘stranglehold’ restraint ban for California police after George Floyd’s death."